The slow run

Home. What is home? Home is where you feel safe, where you know each room in detail, where everything is familiar.

The runner’s home. What’s that? It’s the place where you usually go for a run, your default. It’s that place that you can reach with your eyes closed while dancing through the crowd. It’s that place where you know every corner, (almost) every bump or hole. It’s that place where you have a well-known route to reach 10, 12, or 15 km.

I am a man of routine; I like it. Of course, I also enjoy changing things from time to time, but I also need a place where I know what to expect. That place for me is the IOR Park. I wrote a full review here. 

My home is around 1.5 km from the park and just 2 green lights away. I go out through the back of the flat, run along a road with cute houses that have cherries in late May, then I pass a busy intersection, and it’s a straight line towards the park. I reach the statue of an important historical figure, Alexandru Ioan Cuza. I quickly bow and then enter the park.

The IOR Park is the largest in the area, clean and well organized. From the entrance, I go straight, take the stairs down to the lake, and start running on the new running lane. I always go in the same direction. I always take a right after going down the stairs to the lake. Only once did I go left. Oh boy… it was soooo weird. It was like I was running in a different place, sort of familiar but strange.

I circle the lake once or twice, switching between the long route around the edge and the inner one right around the lake. My usual target is 10 km. In this case, I’ll run two short loops and then head back home on the same route, but on the other side of the road like it’s a one-way pedestrian road(it’s not).

This is my home for running: IOR with a 10 km run. What’s yours?